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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Now that it's the Twelfth Month1, the holiday season is officially under way, as far as I'm concerned. (I'm not a fan of all the businesses that kicked off Christmas in late October or before Thanksgiving.)

I have a sackful of Christmas-themed ephemera — postcards, recipes, illustrations, greeting cards and more — to post this month, so it's a great time to get started.2

To start, here's a vintage and festive recipe sheet for peanut butter cookies from Peter Pan. My educated guess is that this dates to the early 1970s; I found some similar Peter Pan advertising copy (with the same mention of "Scrooges"), in a December 1971 newspaper. I'm sure that this style of glass jar and Peter Pan label could also help us date this piece.3

Here's the cookie recipe from the paper...

1 cup shortening

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup Peter Pan

2 cups sifted flour

2 teaspoons soda

½ teaspoon salt

5 dozen (about) peanuts

Cream shortening, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Stir in Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Sift dry ingredients, stir into creamed mixture. Shape 1 teaspoon of dough. Press into slim S-shape and place on ungreased cooky4 sheet. Insert peanut in end of dough. Press dough with back of fork to make criss-cross. Bake in 350° oven about 10 minutes. Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

3. According to Wikipedia, Peter Pan peanut butter, which dates to 1920, was originally packaged in a tin can with a turn key. During World War II, the packaging switched to glass jars because of metal shortages. And in 1988, again according to Wikipedia, Peter Pan became the first brand of peanut butter to be packaged and sold in plastic jars.

As an additional aside, I am a huge peanut butter addict and, currently, my favorite brand of PB is Peter Pan's 100% natural creamy honey roast. (It's a little obscure, and I fear they won't continue this particular line forever. Hoarding might be an option.)
4. Cooky? Suddenly they're using a Middle Scots spelling of the word?

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

I recently came across a single sheet of paper (probably dating to the 1960s) from the Nelson Knitting Company that features the instructions for making the famous Red Heel Sock Monkey and the somewhat-less-famous Red Heel Sock Elephant.1(The side featuring the complete instructions appears below.)

The sheet also advertises the various types of Nelson Rockford cushioned socks that were available at the time, including Athletic Stretch, Thermal Cushioned and Lightweight.

But the Nelson Red Heel Rockford Socks were the star, as they are the primary ingredient — along with some stuffing and red yarn — for creating the beloved sock monkey.2

The front of the sheet also describes how you can order the book "How to Make Sock Toys" for just $1.50 from Pack-O-Fun. Used copies of that book remain popular today and sell for $6 and up on Amazon.

Much has been written online about Nelson Knitting Company, sock monkeys and Pack-O-Fun. Here are some of the better sites to check out:

Above: Locals (who appear to be Sami, judging by their clothing) relax on a hillside while the cruise ship Stella Polaris travels through harbor. (For a comprehensive history of the Stella Polaris, check out CruiseLineHistory.com.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

"Sewing Pants for Women," written by Elsé Tyroler and published is 1963, is described on the dust jacket as "the first book devoted exclusively to altering and fitting pants for women, written by an expert who has measured and fitted thousands of pairs."

The preface establishes some context regarding the evolution of the need for pants specifically designed to fit women:

"Until World War II, pants were a man's prerogative, designed for men by men. Then Mother became an inventor of necessity. Off to defense plants she want, doffing aprons, donning pedal pushers, Capris, Bermudas, Jamaicas, and even short shorts. The clothing industry was caught with its preparedness down. Everyone, from patternmaker to manufacturer, took up the — sorry we must say it — slack, turning out women's pants by the only fitting methods the knew; men's tailoring. Results? Womanly curves were firmly entrenched in pants fit for men — and a new field of humor was created for cartoonists."

Tyroler has a fun touch as a writer, which is pretty neat given that she's clearly a master dressmaker first1 and wordsmith second. Here are some more examples of her breezy writing:

"Pants have turned out to be rather important. They are worn for cocktails as well as gardening. They turn up in silks and satins under floating evening skirts. They stride forth on the golf course where they are expected to be as flawless as madame's game is not.2 They constitute the suburban uniform for the supermarket circuit."

"Some women are long from ankle to knee, some are long from knee to hip. It couldn't matter less which you are, unless you have ambitions for the Folies Bergere, or unless you have a hankering for a pair of Bermudas, Jamaicas, house boy pants, pedal pushers or any type of pants whose length relies upon the knee!"

"What is the back rise, anyhow? When you look at the blueprint of a pair of pants, the back rise is your sitting room! It is the extra bit of length built into the center back seam to give you the necessary leeway for sitting, bending and walking. No one can appreciate it more than the poor unfortunate who has heard that ominous rrrrrip in public!"

And here are some of the additional illustrations from the book. (No illustrator is credited.)

Finally, here's an advertisement from the back cover of the dust jacket for a set of patterns by Elsé. I think most of us — with the possible exception of Shawn Bradley, Yao Ming and Mark Eaton — can be very glad that most women do not, in real life, look the women in this advertisement.

Footnotes1. According to a 1968 newspaper article I came across, Tyroler, based in Los Angeles at the time, was a "European-trained designer and dressmaker" with "a coveted Master's Diplome in Dressmaking and Pattern Drafting, garnered from years of European training."
2. Annika Sörenstam, Lorena Ochoa and many other stars of women's golf would beg to differ.

But Dolin & Rushford remains a bit of a mystery. The Internet does not, at this time, have anything in the way of details about this department store of long ago. We're probably going to need someone from the vicinity of tiny Hinton to check in and offer some details.1

The book has inscriptions on a few different pages. Written on the inside front cover, vertically from bottom to top, is "Madge King lovingly your devoted mother."2

Madge King's name is written again, in cursive, on the first page. And the first page of the novel contains this inscription, dated June 17, 1928:

Footnotes1. Though it has a population of less than 3,000, Hinton looks like a good destination for off-the-beaten-path history buffs. (It's about two hours southeast of Charleston, West Virginia.) It has a veterans memorial museum, a railroad museum and a Civil War museum.
2. Here's one possibility for the identity of Madge King. It seems to fit the necessary details.

As (kind of) featured in The New York Times...

Papergreat was mentioned in Stephanie Clifford's August 7, 2011, article in The New York Times titled "Shopper Receipts Join Paperless Age." Find out why, years ago, I held onto a receipt for a hot dog!

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